#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #2

by C. Michael Eliasz-Solomon

Donna Pointkouski ‘s question (about the Shoemaker’s Guild) reminded Stanczyk that he has needed for a while to collect his bookmarks/favorites/URLs together on the useful websites in Poland. In particular, the Online Archives. Some of the nifty historical images in this blog have been gathered from these valuable resources.

Most genealogists know that you can use the LDS website familysearch.org and search for microfilm of Polish parishes or synagogues. But what if you wanted to search what was available in Poland itself as a way to see what else is available if you go to Poland to search its civil or ecclesiastical archives. Well, Stanczyk uses The Head Office of State Archives (the state archives of Poland) and in particular, I search the PRADZIADdatabase. You may also want to look at SEZAM, or ELA databases too.

But my images have been coming from Digital Libraries (in Polish = Biblioteka Cyfrowa). I have been collecting a spreadsheet of these digital libraries. They frequently use Dj Vu plug-in to display the scanned images of the books (or other materials). Some regional genealogy societies also have digitized books (Książki Bibliotek Cyfrowych) on their websites. The one Stanczyk uses for his research is: Digital Library of Malopolska (LittlePoland) .

The National Digital Archive has 15 million photos and thousands of audio files too. Recently they also implemented an interface (which seems to be implemented at a handful of Polish Archives) to search multiple Polish Archives. The image at left is “Search in Archives” in Polish.

So I have compiled a spreadsheet of Poland’s Archives and their websites. I believe most have an online catalog and some have also digitized some collections and placed those online too. So I have a TAB for Digital Libraries. Finally, I have compiled the Eclesiastical/Diocessan Archives. Since collecting these from Polish websites, I have determined that Poland and its websites are very dynamic and many links are broken. I have been researching them and correcting them where possible. Since this article is already too long … tomorrow a partial sample of the spreadsheet to enlighten people on what to search for.

One Comment to “#Polish #Genealogy – Useful Websites … #2”

Cool! Thanks for the info. I was browsing the Poznan digital library last night and there are some interesting things there. I’m glad that Polish libraries are putting so much online and many have an English interface. However, they need some PR as I don’t think many researchers here are aware of what’s out there. So great job spreading the word!